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E-participation and democracy

Public initiatives to link government and citizens through technological innovations have been rapidly mushrooming

Muhammad Fajar (The Jakarta Post)
champaign, Illinois
Tue, August 4, 2015

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E-participation and democracy

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ublic initiatives to link government and citizens through technological innovations have been rapidly mushrooming.

The last one was laporpresiden.org, founded in May 2015. It became popular since President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo encouraged Indonesians to utilize the site, together with the government'€™s site lapor.go.id, built under the previous presidency, to channel complaints.

On the one hand, these initiatives conform to the wisdom of e-government. On the other, there is actually a danger of demobilization by depending too much on such participation canals, particularly those created by the government.

According to the UN Public Administration Country Studies, the discourse of e-government refers to how a government employs information and communication technologies to increase effectiveness and efficiency in tackling the government'€™s daily problems.

This entails a normative expectation that e-government will increase the government'€™s capacity to respond to citizens'€™ demands. Moreover, e-government can also drive the government'€™s accountability to its population. The need to be accountable rises from the flux of pressure from citizens, pushing governments to be open about its publicly funded operations.

Aside from these positive outcomes, e-government also leads to several problems.

First, the discourse assumes the state to be a neutral subject. The proponents of e-government overlook the fact that the state is a tool for politicians to materialize their interests.

Although e-government enables citizens to convey their aspirations, it also benefits politicians since this strategy may be used to demobilize people'€™s participation.

How does the opening of participation channels lead into demobilization? Does that not contradict the creed of democracy in people'€™s participation?

If we believe that participation always produces a democratic government, then we are too naive '€” there is actually no destined path from participation to a democratic government. The hidden assumption of e-government is that there are political experts ready to manage citizens'€™ complaints and transform them into policies.
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The lack of power may erode the successes of e-government through the biased selection of complaints.

We could assume e-government institutions are not managed only by politicians, but also by bright graduates and savvy technocrats who could guarantee positive outcomes in response to community input.

Nevertheless, politicians are still the ones who make important decisions in relation to citizens'€™ claims. Their decisions are, not surprisingly, always influenced primarily by their desire to maintain office.

Realizing their constituents'€™ demands only makes sense as long as it conforms to the goal of preserving office. Conversely, hurting public interest is a viable option as long as the cost of doing that does not exceed the cost of legally maintaining their office. For instance, it is common to think that corrupting the state budget for election campaigns is less costly than spending time garnering election contributions from the public. Here, successfully remaining in office justifies the means.

Second, even if we accept the assumption of '€œgood politicians'€ within the state, they still act based on their contextual constraints. Regardless of their reformist ideas and visions, they still need to compromise with other political players, particularly when the politicians lack sufficient power bases. In turn, the lack of power may erode the successes of e-government through the biased selection of complaints.

For instance, it is hard to imagine that people'€™s demand for reform and restructure of the National Police will be met by Jokowi'€™s government even though people have flooded the e-channels with protests against the top officers.

Lack of administrative capacity and skill are not the causes for such a failure. Rather, it is the lack of a power base that forces Jokowi to keep his hands off the police. In contrast, we could easily imagine that our complaints about holes along Jl. MH Thamrin would be swiftly tackled.

The significant difference between the two issues is the political stakes they carry. The first complaint has higher stakes for a political leader than the second. A leader falls because of political friction, not their inability to fix a pothole.

With such images of politicians as the state controllers, the e-government initiative may succumb to assorted pitfalls. First, channeling claims online only gives rise to a better feeling for the claimants, a feeling that they have participated in democracy. We might think that by protesting through those sites we have become active subjects in a democratic system.

If our comprehension of democracy stops there, then we have elided a crucial aspect of democracy: mobilization of claims. Mobilization here refers to manufactured mobilizations by the elites to create a perception that a democracy is actually in a good shape. But it also means mobilization from below to claim access and control over something that really matters in people'€™s lives.

The first definition can lead to demobilization. Ideally, people should mobilize around issues significant to their lives so that they can press the government if those issues are not addressed. Unfortunately, this is the only form of power that people have, unlike the economic power held by oligarchs or offices owned by politicians.

The problem is always how to mobilize a large number of people and pressure the government using these numbers. If we think that e-government is sufficient to make the government comply with our demands, then the strategy to demobilize people by '€œmobilizing'€ claims through e-government has worked.

To conclude, the initiative of e-government must be perceived as just one of many ways to drive political reform. It is, however, never enough since it should be complemented by people making claims through participation in movements.

This may sound too idealistic since people in general care more about their to-do lists in the office the next morning or getting their kids to school. Nevertheless, articulating grievances can only occur meaningfully through social organizations on the ground.

Thinking that democracy will work through elections or mouse clicks is a misunderstanding of democracy.
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The writer is studying for his PhD in political science at Northwestern University in Illinois, the US.

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